Flawed Fashions Are None the Worse for Wear : Each Year, the U.S. Customs Service Donates Seized Counterfeit Clothing to Good Causes

The brightly colored parkas were damaged goods, their labels cut out, the white insulation showing through. But as another winter approaches in the former Yugoslavia and another cease-fire is put on hold, shivering refugees seem unlikely to mind wearing flawed fashions.

On Wednesday, the U.S. Customs Service--which had cut the fake brand-name labels from the smuggled winter coats--began shipping 5,000 of the parkas to Bosnia-Herzegovina, and set about outfitting hundreds of needy Los Angeles residents with counterfeit brand-name clothing, from hiking boots to polo shirts.

The 70 pallets of red and purple and orange coats “will undoubtedly help save many lives this winter,” said Rachel Repko of the international relief organization World Vision, which is coordinating the shipment.

A few years ago, the jackets would have been destroyed--along with the 11,000 pairs of sneakers that once illegally sported “Keds” labels; 159 polo shirts that had no right to bear the famous Lacoste alligator, and the 19,000 pairs of fake Levi’s 501s. (The brand-name maker of parkas wanted to keep the company’s identification confidential.)

But now the shoes also are headed to the Balkan nation; the shirts, with the offending reptile cut off, are bound for the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department’s youth athletic league, and the no-name jeans are going to the county Probation Department for low-income, troubled youths.

Since 1990, the Customs Service has worked to see that such goods do not go into an incinerator, but into the hands and onto the backs of the needy, said Customs spokesman Michael Fleming.

In the past year, Customs has given away $9.8 million worth of clothing seized nationwide, $1 million of it in Los Angeles County.

The value of the goods on display for giveaway Wednesday at a Rancho Dominguez warehouse was placed at more than $700,000, much of it manufactured in the Pacific Rim.

The business of seizing counterfeit property--and giving it away--is a quirky one.

Typically, the process involves negotiations with the company whose trademark was violated and the removal of any bootleg logos. When dealing with hundreds of thousands of items a year, Fleming said, sometimes that process is less than delicate.

On the “Levi’s,” not only were the patches on the waistband removed, but the tell-tale buttons on the fly were lopped off.

Instead of a smiling green alligator above the left breast, each of the counterfeit Lacoste shirts sported a hole, about 1 inch square.

“That would have to be patched to avoid having the hole in the shirt,” Fleming said.

“But even something that needs to be patched would be welcome . . . to some needy people.”